3 AM
by Jackimee
Summary: Annie and Abed are both awake in the middle of the night, and they discuss the bad dreams that woke them up.


This is kind of a weird, random excerpt of their lives that may or may not be totally aimless, but man, was it fun to write. Lots of symbolism in here. Yay symbolism. ENJOY.

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><p><strong>3 AM<strong>

Annie's eyes twitched as she dreamt.

_The gridded walls of the dreamatorium. Not enough light to see by. Something's unfamiliar. Something's wrong._

_A feeling of presence. No longer alone. Heart pounds aloud._

_A figure, from the back. A man. He will not turn._

_His head tilts to one side, then the other. Then again. Faster. His face is never visible. He may not have a face at all. _

_But his head, it oscillates. It oscillates. It oscillates. It oscillates-_

Annie gasped for air, waking. She groped at her quilt, her heart racing, and for a moment she felt as if she couldn't breathe - in her panic, her lungs deemed oxygen invalid. She sprung upright, eyes wide.

With her full wakefulness came the awareness of her safety and surroundings, and soon she could breathe once again. She patted her bedspread as she sat still for a minute, catching her breath. The weight of the darkness and silence steadied her. The faintly glowing 2:55AM stared at her from across the room, and she stared back.

_I think I need some water,_ she thought.

As she inched out of her doorway, she tried to shake her nightmare from her mind. She clenched her teeth at the thought of how the night always magnified fear. Then, as her eyes searched for light, they locked onto a dimly backlit figure – the edge of an arm and a head, in a chair by the TV.

_Gasp._

"It's just me Annie," Abed said, calmly and quietly, without turning around.

"…Oh," squeaked Annie, and she glided over to him, to confirm that he had a face...

She came around the side of his chair, and she saw that his eyes were closed. They slowly opened as Annie orbited him, until she eclipsed the candle that flickered on the TV stand.

"Uh…" Annie started, "what are you doing up?"

Abed closed his eyes again as soon as he became comfortable with her presence.

"I couldn't sleep," he said to Annie, who sat down in the chair next to him. "What about you?"

"I had sort of an unpleasant dream…" Annie answered, fiddling with her hands.

Abed opened his eyes and stared absently at the candle.

"Me too," he said.

Annie could not look away from Abed. He looked distressed, but serene on a different level. He looked as if he were in a trance. Annie watched the reflection of the flame dance in his relaxed eyes, and she noticed the shine of a light sweat at his hairline. He was still, save for an intermittent twitch in his forearm.

Abed felt her eyes on him.

"What was your dream about?" he asked, turning to her with mild interest.

It took a while for Annie to wrap her head around how to explain. She began, and Abed waggled his eyebrows at the word "dreamatorium."

Annie stopped, clicking her tongue. Her mouth was dry.

Abed reached to his other side, grabbed his own water bottle, and passed it to Annie, all without breaking eye contact. She smiled a thank you and took a few sips, and she then continued to tell Abed about the man with the swinging head.

"I never saw the front of him, but by the deranged way he was moving, I… I could tell that it he was faceless, or alien, or…" She trailed off, shaking her head.

Abed's eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second.

"Fear of the unknown," he decided.

Annie felt a small rush of clarity.

"Is that what it means?" she asked eagerly.

"I don't know. I'm not a psychologist," Abed stated. He sounded oddly defensive. Annie started to raise an eyebrow, until Abed broke his gaze and smiled, amused.

"It's just a guess," he said. "But it seems plausible."

Annie rolled her eyes affectionately and smirked at the candle.

"I guess."

Abed watched her look down, and he saw her smile fade into more of less of a frown. She scratched anxiously at the arms of the chair. Abed reached over and put his hand on top of hers, clutching it lightly.

Annie blinked several times. Abed's hand did not feel compassionate, but it was comfortably stable. She suddenly felt meditative. No racing thoughts crowded her mind. She saw Abed rest his head back again and close his eyes, and they both sat comfortably for what might have been a few minutes.

The candle stirred.

Annie crinkled the water bottle and the two emerged from their mutual daze.

"…What was your dream about?" She asked after a moment. But Abed stiffened noticeably. "I mean, you don't _have_ to tell me;" said Annie, "It's just that I assumed you would after I told you mine..."

Abed knew he was being prodded well enough, but he didn't mind it so much. This was Annie, and he knew how she was: benevolently manipulative.

"It's not that," Abed said. "I wouldn't mind telling you, Annie. I'm just worried about reliving my nightmare by talking about it."

"It's not so bad," she retorted, truthfully. "Telling you about mine actually helped a little." But Abed sniffed and withdrew his hand solemnly. Annie understood, and the two sat frozen for a moment.

"It sort of reminded me of 'The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,'" Abed started, his hushed voice spilling suddenly into the silence. "You know, that episode of _The Twilight Zone_?" He noted Annie's lack of recognition. "It's about a group of neighbors who are told that aliens are invading after their power's gone out… they get hysterical and end up killing each other." He shook his head with mild shame for the human race.

"My god," Annie said. "Is that what happened in your dream?" She was intrigued, and she was held in suspense as Abed took a few moments to articulate.

"Well… it was about the study group," he said, mournfully.

Wanting to help prepare Abed to face his dream's visualization, Annie handed the water bottle back to him. He took a sip.

"First we were all just hostilely afraid of one another," Abed continued. "There was a lot of yelling… accusing… and then things started changing. I mean, you guys started changing. And your words were becoming increasingly unclear to me until I couldn't understand what you were saying at all. But you were all angry. At me." His eyebrows lowered. "I didn't even know what I'd done."

As he paused, a bead of sweat began to form visibly at his temple.

"Then it became a game of paintball, and you all stood facing me with your paintball guns pointed at my face. I was scared, so I shot first, and immediately I realized-…" Abed swallowed the last few words and then couldn't speak again. He looked down at his tense hands.

After a few breaths, he finished, "…my gun hadn't been a paintball gun."

Annie watched Abed shut his eyes as if trying to board up his windows against the image of his nightmare, and it was hard to see him feeling like that.

…But she felt like that too. And although a trace of guilt passed through her with this thought, she realized it was comforting to see someone who's usually so grounded feel the same fear she felt. She struggled to inch her armchair over until it was up against Abed's. Giving him sort of an adjacent hug, she linked her arm around his and leaned the side of her face on his shoulder. After the minute it took for Abed to adjust to this, he rested his head down against Annie's and supported her linked arm with his other hand.

The two remained interlocked, and it was the mutuality of the situation that comforted them both. Annie felt Abed's warmth and was lulled by the nearly undetectable rise and fall of breath in his shoulder. Where they were touching, they overlapped, and they created an ironic brightness amidst the dark of the current hour.

Neither wanted to move, and there was no reason to. The candle would continue flickering away until it was blown out. At first they were silent, each falling into low-grade meditation once again, and neither considering sleep. After a while, and as expected, Abed began to be tempted by the blank screen that he hadn't thought about in almost record time.

"Wanna watch some TV?" he muttered into Annie's hair. Annie laughed soundlessly.

"Of course," she said contently, her eyes closed.

_The Nanny_ was on, as it always was at this hour, and it amplified the small flame of lightheartedness that Annie and Abed's embrace had kept afloat. Annie fell asleep.

Eventually, the dim blue glow of an early sky fought through the curtains, and Annie was awake again. Abed felt her stir with wakefulness and her soft cheek stretched against his shoulder as she yawned. He turned his head away and he yawned as well. Annie sat up drowsily, and Abed spoke before she had a chance to.

"Going back to bed?"

"Mmm—" she stretched. "Yeah, I think so."

She put a hand on Abed's shoulder for a moment and smiled, before departing for her bedroom.

It was 5 o'clock.

Abed was now free of thought and more or less content, and he got up for some Lucky Charms. Before taking his third step, he promptly returned to the candle and blew out the flame. As he walked away, he left a thin stream of smoke rising from the wick and forming fleeting swirls. The smoke ceased, and the candle was still, as were the empty chairs it mirrored. In the empty room, the candle resumed patiently awaiting its next unexpected 3AM shift, whenever it may be.


End file.
